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Stallman — 20 Years of Explaining Free Software
H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "The first recorded talk by Richard Stallman on free software was in 1986, so I've picked from the 2006 recordings and have made a transcript of a recent talk: The Free Software Movement and the Future of Freedom. Those two are the only transcripts of his general free software talk. Others that exist are on specific topics such as patents, GPLv3, copyright, etc. For those who've been reading Slashdot during the gradual evolution of Stallman's pronouncements, it's interesting to see what has changed over 20 years."
Nothing for you to see here; move along.
Truer words never 403'd.
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How about posting audio streams/downloads of all Stallman recordings, and accepting publicly submitted transcripts on a Wiki? Let the community decide what Stallman said, including comments by Stallman. Such a project could be completed for cheap, fairly quickly - the open source way.
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make install -not war
Here, actually seems more interesting than TFA (This is Slashdot; I didn't read TFA). To quote:
I work within the political system of the European Union to ensure that the development and use of free software is not hampered by new legislation. The best known example of a legislative project I worked on is the "Software Patents Directive".
it has been twenty years and three showers ago since his first speech. Amazing.
...when RMS chose a word with many meanings like "free" to describe his software.
You see when people adopted the monkier of open source software how things really took off. It's not ambiguous and explains quite clearly it's about source code, not price.
He sums it up with his talks on pirating. There lies the free software thats worth buying without buying. As to the other free software, spyware and oss dominate. So what do you want? open source, pirated, or spyware-ridden? Each has weaknesses, but the freeware with spyware comes with cool mouse cursors and smileys!
but what's the difference between free and open again? Hehe...man, he must be so sick of uninformed journalists and pseudo-nerds asking the same question every friggin month...
And for those that want more RMS stuff, I have stored some speeches (movies and sound recordings) at http://musthave.sunbase.org/Stallman/.
If someone 20 years from now quotes me, I am going punch them.
Tried "man emacs" lately? Or used gcc? Just to give two examples of projects he initiated and wrote the original versions of.
he still can't sing
"He has never agreed with the ideals of the Free Software movement. In fact, he likes to call himself apolitical.
[00:57:44]
But, as often happens when people say they are apolitical, in fact, they are espousing and promoting a particular political point of view and his political point of view is that the developer should have total power, the developer can simply decide whether you have freedom or not and that it's always wrong to disobey the developer. That is, it's always wrong to violate any software licence. That the view he has stated in the past.
If Linus wanted complete control over Linux, why oh why did he release it under the GPL?
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
This is pretty typical of Stallman-- he's trying to be clever.
He purposely chose the word "Free" over something like "Libre", because he wants you to think about many of the multiple meanings behind "free" at the same time. Stallman's attitude is "Sure, it's hard to learn; but in the end you've learned 10X as much!"
However, his style is way too complex-- most of us get overwhelmed when trying to learn about all these issues at one time. Learning is an incremental process. Stallman throws this big pile of spaghetti at you all at once.
You just want to learn Linux or use GCC to compile your first C program, but Stallman insists that you learn the evils of software patents and a dozen other issues at the same time at the same time.
When Stallman wrote the Free Software Song, did he write something which is easy to sing, in a familiar tone? No, he chose a song which is in 7/8 time (Hard to keep a rhythym?
Actually, calling the whole OS "Linux" is more akin to calling all of Windows "Mozilla Firefox".
When Linux came along GNU was already *working* on a kernel (everything else that they saw that was needed for an OS was pretty much written). Linux stole most of the thunder from that project, leading to the current dilapidated state of the Hurd, as well as the illusion that the kernel's name is also the OS name.
He did get over it a long time ago, like when he decided that he is not going to sue anyone for (legally) re-using his code and omitting what would be their trade mark. You cannot blame the man just for being vocal. His peewees provide for comic relief, whereas Microsoft's cost a lot of money and cause headaches.
One thing that really sounds dated in the 1986 lecture is the discussion of passwords at the MIT AI lab. This was back when people were on local networks, and they knew everybody else who was on the network with them. People wrote C code that looked like "for (;*q;) {*p++ = *++q}", and didn't worry about buffer overflows, because hey, what kind of idiot would intentionally crash a program by putting in an unreasonably long input string? Also, in a modern university, some of the hardware and software hacking exploits he talked about would probably result in your being presented with a cardboard box to empty your desk into.
Find free books.
The difference is that Windows is an operating system, Linux is just a kernel. You can do quite a bit with Windows on its own. But there's not much you can do with Linux on its own, without anything from GNU.
I have viewed a couple of videos of Stallman's speeches and have transcripted one of them. Listening him speak, I couldn't help thinking that he has all the qualities of a leader. His speeches strike a cord and entertain at the same time. He has very good oratorical skills.
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And lets not forget about taking on Symbolics single-handedly. And winning.
He will never get over it.
When mswindows 95 appeared, it wasn't called "the DOS system". It was the Windows system, running on DOS. Okay, that's too much of a stretch.
mswindows nt/2000 was not the "kernel32.exe".
OSX is not "mach + some apple stuff".
An operating system is a lot more than a kernel, in the same way that a car is a lot more than its engine, even when it doesn't work without it. The user doesn't get to interact with the engine, and the car would be the same car, if the engine is replaced. That happens the same way with Operating Systems and kernels. Debian is not there yet, but they have several GNU distributions with varying kernels.
Linux is a good kernel, and plays an important role for the success of free software. Aside from that, when you get for example, Ubuntu, there is a lot more GNU than Linux included in the CD. And the platform is defined by the GNU system, not the Linux kernel.
When people say they know "Linux", for example the "Linux" console, they are talking about bash. When talking about "Linux" programming, it's usually GCC, the "Linux" desktop might be Gnome or KDE, of course, but it's not Linux either.
The guy will never get over it, because, in that particular issue, he is right, and the people who think different from him are just wrong. There's no way he will change his opinion on that issue.
I will usually avoid using "non-commercial use" material in my own work. For one thing, it is incompatible with say GPL-licensed software, since e.g. a CC-licensed "non-commercial use" icon would prevent a commercial entity from using it, defeating the purpose of the GPL.
I want someone to explain free beer to me.
Preferably with lots of examples.
Stallman is a philosopher first and involved with software second.
Actually GNU might be the worlds first truly free and secular religion.
I read the whole article and agree with most of his arguments.
However, unless you have a just society, with power controlled by the people it governs, you can not have the 4 levels of fredom. And I am not confident that good will is enough.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Stallman is brilliant, and driven.
Stallman is an evangelical nut job.
I try not to think of Stallman when I think of FOSS, because I like to think about freedom instead of socialism, and while not exclusive, the human implementations of either almost always work against the other.
If Stallman were trying to sell me a particular model car, I'd walk off the lot, shake it off, and buy the same model from a different dealer.
If Stallman is the messenger, the message is dead.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
GNU however could be replaced with something else. e.g. the BSD userland/libraries. Would we then be obliged to call the operating system BSD/Linux?
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
"Fuck you. Pay me."
RMS has good intentions with the FSF but misses one critical point.
It's all good and well to give out free software, but how useful is that if nobody can really learn from it or modify it?
Raise your hand if you're a software developer. Keep your hand up if you can digest the Mozilla code and add new functionality to it within a day. Weekend. Week. Month.
Repeat for GCC, Linux Kernel, etc...
Now granted there are some well commented/documented projects. But if you don't make it part of your core values to not only give out free functional software but also EDUCATIONAL SOURCE CODE then we're not much better off are we?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
But if he's truly judging the value of open source vs proprietary software primarily on the pragmatic grounds of user-adoption, then he should concede that, ~20 years later, proprietary software has been far more valuable for society because it has been much more widely adopted.
Mark me as flamebait if you must, but I do think he's made a dramatic, but quiet shift, in his rationale for doing away with proprietary software. Proprietary software is no longer bad primarily because it isn't as widely used as free software is supposed to be, but because closedness itself...just is (bad). Ok, he touches briefly on code reuse and such... but those certainly weren't his primary justifications and these seem to be his supporting arguments anyways....
-5 Troll (Dogma Violation)
A lot of people do not realize that they base many decisions (such as car purchases) on quirks of personality, or prejudices against certain people, rather than on the merits of the proposition in question. It's good that you recognize this. It would be even better if you would tried to stop doing it...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Haven't you ever heard of GNU/Hurd?
You haven't?
Well, nobody else has either so don't feel bad.
... a recent picture of RMS? I thought he was taller.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Fair enough, credit where credit is due, however all the GNU stuff in the world amounted to nothing until the Linux kernel came along (and in all probability still would not of).
Where were you before 1993? Back before Linux was 1.0, GNU had gcc, g++, Emacs (yes, there was XEmacs too), libc, text utils, and quite a few others that were typically installed on AIX, SunOS, HPUX, Dynix, OSF, DOS (I used grep.exe, sort.exe and uniq.exe quite frequently), and IRIX among others. It was essentially required to have most of the GNU stuff on development Unixes as the standard Unix utilities sucked in comparison.
Credit where credit is due, GNU was everywhere before Linux ever started.
>GNU however could be replaced with something else. e.g. the BSD userland/libraries. Would we then be obliged to call the operating system BSD/Linux?
For me replacing the BSD kernel with the kernel Linux in a BSD system would still result in a BSD System but if you want to follow the logic of Linus Torvalds it would be a Linux System.
You can take my position, the position of Linus or for example decide that both BSD and Linux are a essential part of the new OS, that both deserves some kudos and call it e.g. BSD/Linux.
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Where were you before 1993? Back before Linux was 1.0, GNU had gcc, g++, Emacs (yes, there was XEmacs too), libc, text utils, and quite a few others that were typically installed on AIX, SunOS, HPUX, Dynix, OSF, DOS (I used grep.exe, sort.exe and uniq.exe quite frequently), and IRIX among others. It was essentially required to have most of the GNU stuff on development Unixes as the standard Unix utilities sucked in comparison.
Credit where credit is due, GNU was everywhere before Linux ever started.
There is no disagreement there. That however does not mean that you couldn't have Linux without all the GNU stuff.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
Or you could just do what most of the human population does and call it something simpler. i.e. Linux
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
``People ... didn't worry about buffer overflows, because hey, what kind of idiot would intentionally crash a program by putting in an unreasonably long input string?''
This line of thinking is not followed at the FSF: they have a policy that programs must not contain arbitrary limits. Not that they always follow this strictly, but at least it's in their coding standards.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
A) fewer people will use the software (because it tries to prevent people from using w/o paying)
B) the software is less useful to people because they can't modify the original program
C) proprietary software is less valuable because other developers in lateral areas can't learn from it.
It seems pretty clear to me that his arguments failed on these pragmatic grounds and that he's had to shift his anti-ownership rational to far more nebulous and entirely philosophical arguments about "freedom" for its own sake.
The facts are:
A) Contrary to his "first level" of harm: proprietary software has vastly outcompeted open software despite its barriers.
B) Contrary to his "second level" of harm: that most users still prefer closed source software despite the fact that they can't tinker with it and despite the fact that it costs more/has more barriers.
C) Contrary to his "third level" of harm: that proprietary software still appeals more to its end users despite the fact that proprietary developers benefit little from the pool of open source code. This despite the fact that open source developers supposedly have a huge advantage over proprietary developers because they can exploit the GPL and other copyleft code to a level that their counterparts cannot.
In short, he's given up on his pragmatic rationale since they've been proven almost entirely wrong. I'll concede that there is something to be said for the sharing of code in some cases, but we're to choose rationally between no ownership vs choice of ownership (the status quo) that the latter is the only sensible and pragmatic choice given his own (old) arguments and the empirical evidence (or lack thereof) from his so-called copyleft movement.
This is a good point. If a program is released as free software and the source is extensive and hard to read, then it's possible but very costly for users to modify it. For most people, making a change will involve either (a) getting someone on the original development team to make the change or (b) hiring programmers who weren't on the original development team to spend a lot of time studying the code. If you don't have either a lot of money or a lot of time and programming skill, then the original developers of the program effectively have a monopoly on improvement of the code. So much for Stallman's Freedom Three.
Contrast GNU Emacs. It's designed to be easily modified. There is a tutorial available on how to modify Emacs. There is also a wiki for people to share modifications of Emacs without asking the developers to add the changes to an official release.
If free software developers are seriously concerned about their users' ability to modify the code, they should think carefully about how to do this when developing the programs (e.g., documenting the code, using Guile or another extension language).
Well, maybe to you or RMS in your mind, but freedom is a concept, not software.
If I download GNU Hurd, am I downloading freedom or code? Thought so. Go back to school, boy.
He was asked that in an interview before "How do you continue, re-explaining the same thing over and over?", his answer was "I have a mission, and that's what it takes".
It was on a website that's gone now, I think it was called "Linux Power".
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I appreciate most of what RMS says. I strongly disagree with his numbering scheme for the 4 essential software freedoms. Read people count starting at 1. It's stupid to have the leader of a movement use an inside joke when giving a public talk about something so important. Freedom zero.... How stupid.
Hey Richard, how many freedoms are there?
Four.
What's the fourth one?
There isn't one... Only a zeroth through third.
This nonsense has got to stop. The GPL is fairly readable, but this stupid geekism right there mixed in with the fundamental freedoms is IMHO just adding confusion where none needs to be. I would hope this renumbering will make it into GPLv3.
> How about just replacing the entire Stallman with a CGI character that reads from a wiki based on public transcripts?
Why does chibi-Stallman keep talking about how to get a larger pen fifteen? And what happened to the other fourteen pens, anyhow?
Thanks for that.
I keep a list of transcripts here:
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/
The FSFE Fellowship project has an advocacy section with a list of relevent videos:
http://fsfe.org/en/advocacy/videos
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
He explains this in the talk:
"only programmers can directly exercise freedoms one and three but every user can directly exercise freedoms zero and two - the freedoms to run the program and copy the program - and the non-programmer users indirectly get the benefit of freedoms one and three. They can't use these freedoms directly, because that means programming, but when other people exercise these freedoms, the non-programmers also share in the benefits. So these four freedoms are essential for all users, including the non-programmers, who are the majority of society."
TFA is worth a read.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Here's my post directive review of that project. But there's more to do.
Something very important this year is GPLv3. Here's a transcript of RMS on GPLv3, and one of something I said.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
For you i will repeat the conclusion of my first post:
I would go with option 1.
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Maybe if you hadn't re-defined the word "free", you wouldn't need to explain it so much.
No Linus wouldn't have used a BSD license, as without RMS and the FSF work on emacs/gcc which inspired it (can someone find a link?) a member of the CSRG wouldn't have started talking the others into a free license, so BSD would still require an AT&T source license to have.
If this is correct, it's huge. What you're basically saying is that without Stallman's work, not only would we not have the GPL part of the F/LOSS world, but we probably wouldn't have the BSD part, either.
We may owe Stallman a bigger debt of gratitude than I realized.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
See the thought experiment. Take Photoshop: if you offered a user the choice to take Photoshop with no access to the source vs. complete access to the source, what do you think that most people would choose, all other things (including price) being equal?
The third level of harm doesn't have much to do with the end users, anyway. However, to continue the thought experiment: in an office environment, would you rather have open-source printer drivers you could get tech support to fix on-site (or vendor patches if already fixed), or closed-source printer drivers that require vendor support?
I think that your arguments focus on the wrong side of the point. Proprietary software is popular, true. That doesn't mean that open sourcing it would make it less popular.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
In tabletop role-playing games, people often talk about rule 0: "the GM's word is law," "players can leave at any time," etc. It's called rule 0 because it's so obvious that it's not generally listed in the rules.
Rule 0 for free software is -- basically -- the right to run it. Again, so obvious that it's silly that it needs to be there. What use would be a program that you couldn't run? However, sometimes it's helpful to label these obvious rules, just in case someone forgets them.
That said, who really cares? The people taking an interest in software licenses are either developers (who get the pseudo-in-joke) or lawyers, and who cares about the lawyers, anyway? Besides: free/open source software is a big thing now, so it must not matter to the general public.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
After a little research, I believe this is incorrect.
Based on what I can find, the four-clause BSD license was applied to 3BSD, released in 1979. The famous sourceless Xerox printer driver that sparked RMS' thinking on Free Software wasn't delivered to the MIT AI Lab until 1980, the GNU project didn't start until 1983, the FSF was founded in 1985 and the GPLv1 was published in 1988. So, just based on the timeline, it seems that the BSD license predates RMS' thoughts and work on Free Software licensing.
RMS was instrumental in convincing various people, including UC California, to remove the advertising clause from the BSD license, but I don't think he had anything to do with inspiring CSRG to create their own free license.
I'd love to be proved wrong, though.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Actually, that would be a mistake and completely unnecessary in order to give you the freedom you need to make and publish rebuttals. You shouldn't be able to alter what other people say when they're airing their views, as is the case with political commentary. You should be able to quote them and rebut, and this is a freedom you already have in the US thanks to fair use exceptions to copyright law. While fair use is under attack, the remedy is certainly not to let people misstate other people's views.
People outside the US probably already have something in their legal systems which is comparable to fair use, so your concern has already been addressed there too. The remaining people who have nothing comparable would not be well-served to allow their modified versions of his talk or transcript to be distributed under Stallman's name ("mak[ing] him say whatever we want").
Finally, to be able to misquote someone is not a freedom, it's a power.
Digital Citizen
I'd say that's a minor concern that isn't hampering anyone's appreciation of software freedom. That concern is minor, like the excuse others (including on /.) use to dismiss his message out of hand—his gruffness and unwillingness to placate questions loaded with perspectives that silently support non-freedom. I know how his responses sometimes annoy people, and I too think that he could sometimes find ways to make the exact same point without brushing people off, but the best way to fix it is to become a better speaker yourself on the issue of software freedom and not talk to people that way, and to acknowledge that sometimes it is perfectly appropriate to call a spade a spade and not tolerate questions that make no sense or try to reframe the debate away from user's freedom.
The open source movement doesn't do this work at all, despite any claims that they agree with his perspective or that the two movements essentially say the same thing. That movement never talks about user's freedoms. So no matter how nice their representatives may appear and interact with others, they're essentially selling a philosophy that doesn't speak to all computer users (that movement speaks chiefly to managers of software developers), and dispenses with ethics and social solidarity in pursuit of placating business (including software proprietors).
Then there is the 2-stage trap RMS identified and debunked in his talk.
Digital Citizen
Stallman has been in the public eye for 20 years now.
I find myself wondering if the FSF will manage to remain visible for another 20. I don't believe the recent shift towards activism is going to be good for them, long term. Software is always where they have brought people the most benefit...and given that Linux is so involved with corporations now, it has become more important than ever that the toolchain be maintained by a non-profit.
Sadly, the FSF don't seem to be interested in making that, which was their most important work, their focus any more.
Way too much talk, not enough haircuts.
This sounds funy, but if he wants the sheep to listen, he, as a wolf, should hide in sheeps clothes. Want to impress the decision takers? Look like one!
Now he just looks like a stoney who says: "hey man. Listen. I have, like. this groovy idea, that, like we can make, like software free. You know, like for the people from the people. It will be awesome. Grouphug."
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Any misunderstanding of what Stallman said will not be corrected by allowing "the community [to] decide what Stallman said". Unlike the expressions of ancient speakers, we can hear his recordings, read the transcripts of what he said, and email him.
Also, such work is being done (albeit not on a wiki, which poses some minor technical advantages) thanks to the work of the FSF and FSFE.
Finally, it's worth noting that Stallman was not and is not a member of the open source movement. He started and remains a member of the free software movement which is philosophically distinct and over 10 years older than the open source movement. In fact, it is people's ignorance of this is directly addressed in the talk being referenced in this /. story:
Digital Citizen
RMS says that most software out there is custom software that is developed for a single user, and that this software is - unless proprietary software - not unethical to develop.
This is an interesting position I have not seen him express previously.
He seems to have in mind a very constrained set of liberties. His essential software liberties only apply within user communities. Why is this? Because, he says that a single user who contracts to have developed and to own a piece of custom software, can himself both possess the four essential software liberties, choose not to exercise them, and deprive no one else of the four essential software liberties with respect to this software.
How is this? The four essential software liberties have nothing to say about a mandate to share software - to create or expand a user community. As far as the four essential liberties are concerned, having the liberty to share software of which you are a user is an essential liberty, but for you as a user having this liberty, actually sharing the software is entirely superogatory.
I'm not sure whether or not this is something new he has latched onto, but it is certainly helpful for his credibility to not be forced to say that the majority of software developers - his target audience - are themselves engaged scandalously unethical behavior and oppression as a profession, because he says, most software is custom software of this ethically ambiguous sort.
A lot of the time he was telling the same message to different groups of people - so it would be very repetative. As a native english speaker (not from the USA where such changes are popular) I was offended by his redefinition of the word "free" to make a point to first time I heard it - let alone the tenth time he jumped down some poor journalists throat for using the word the way the dictionary defines it - but that does get the message accross even if it did make dozens of interviews say exactly the same thing no matter what the topic of the interview questions are. The less said about the LiGnuX and gnu/linux name suggestions to advertise gnu the better - the GPL is really what we should be hearing about.
No he didn't write emacs - he "invented" the text macros that inspired emacs on another editor but other people wrote it. When a later emacs developer added in support for X windows (which at the time he deemed counterproductive to gnu becuase hurd didn't run X) he forked it, but he did not become the developer, he appointed someone else that took over a year to release any patches. He did contribute a lot to emacs at various times but was not the major developer. As for "man emacs" - if that gives you anything at all it shows RMS is not in control - the man vs info dispute looked very childish to me.
Also, XEmacs is the fork of GNU Emacs, not the other way round, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XEmacs.
> "The first recorded talk by Richard Stallman on free software was in 1986, so..." umm, maybe that's right if you only count live gigs. However, I seem to recall that there was an interview of RMS in some (paper) magazine in 1985 - I think it was "Computer Language" magazine. Just my 0.02. - Mike Schwartz
Does it make it GNU/OS X?
We are here today because of Stallman.
Because he paused, thought and saw that mankind should share, that greed should not be mainstream.
He's only a man and he started to build a castle of sand for others look.
He even wanted to share an idea, and worked to that end. And kept working just like a little ant, for so little power he has as a single man.
I think he is an atheist...
Well, I'm not, I think.
So thank you, Richard, and God bless you!
I think RMS could have won this name game if he had simply said from the beginning...
... The GNU System!"
"And now, with the addition of the Linux kernel, we have
Since the emacs developer of the time was the one that continued with xemacs and a completly new developer took over emacs and took a year to learn the existing codebase before making any updates I would have to disagree. RMS has done a lot of very good things but he is no sleepless superman doing all of these things at once with no help - he started it with his macros and others continued from there, with quite a lot of input at various times from RMS. However he appears to have not had time to keep up with the changes to emacs proir to the fork and at the time had very strong feelings about commercially financed software even if it was under his own licence. He certainly had no time to do more than write a few strongly worded emails and replace the developer of the time. Perhaps it was events like this that led to the release early and often situation now instead of waiting years between patches.
The mailing lists of the time are still on the net - so please don't just argue with me without looking at them.
but then again, as a non-americal, we have a *ground floor* and the *first floor* is above.
Anyway, the answer to the question isn't "there isn't one", the fourth law is numbered 3. People of larger cranial capacity can understand that just because it isn't labelled "4" doesn't mean it isn't the fourth. Take a look at a dead heat result in sport:
first
second
second
fourth
Hey, where did "third" go?!???!!
Closed app, dies. Previous owner says "if you pay $100,00 I'll be able to get the code out". payments ensue, the code is released and blender is a GPL product.
Pre-paid for the work.
He convinced the BSD people to remove the advertising clause.
That just makes it more practical, and of course, GPL compatible.
I've changed my dress style (while working) based on your logic, but I don't think your forumlas still work when my variables are replaced with Stallman's.
Stallman's main focus is not decision makers, it is the public and the action groups, and they influence the decision makers more than one intellectual can. Also, the decision makers usually evaluate things only in terms of money or votes. If they do something ethical, it is completely coincidental (i.e. they did it because it would get money or votes). So Stallman is most effective when he tells the public not to pay for proprietary software or not to vote for someone who supports bad legislation - that leads the decision makers to make a decision based only on money or votes but which is (coicidentally) ethical.
Also, a mirror situation has been proven: Stallman has met with, and gotten endorsements from the president of India (figurehead), the president of Ecuador (head of state), the top candidate for the 2007 French presidential election (where president is head of state), the president of Venuzuela (head of state), and probably some others. So long hair and the lack of a tie does not mean you won't influence decision makers.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
From his answer to question #2 in the transcript:
the reason that the BSD developers started making their code free was at least partly due to the visit that I paid to them in 1984 or 1985, because I wanted to be able to use some of their code in GNU. So I asked them, because at that time, BSD existed, it was a version of Unix, and you had to show them an AT&T source licence in order to get a copy of BSD. So I told them: you are effectively donating your labour, your work, to a company. It's not even a charity, and you're donating to it. Why don't you separate your code from AT&T's code, and that way you could make your code free.
(Note the word "partly" in the first sentence - don't think he's trying to take full credit.)
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
- Codify the Four Freedoms for software in a concise manner.
- Create the GPL to prevent his code ever being used to deny these freedoms to a user.
- Found the GNU project to create a complete Free operating system. They now have one, although it works better if you run it on one of the four (maybe more now) Free kernels it supports, rather than the GNU one.
He wrote some code too, but there are a lot of other people who could have done that. Far fewer who could have accomplished the rest of what he set in motion.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Linux is an almost irrelevant package to the GNU system. Both the FreeBSD and OpenSolaris kernels include a Linux ABI compatibility layer, so (assuming filesystem and driver compatibility) you could swap out Linux and replace it with another, existing, free kernel, reboot, and I doubt any users would notice the difference. Try that with the GNU system.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News